“Shocking Diagnosis Forces Wealthy Father of Three to Confront Hidden Family Secrets”
Finding The Right Donor Is Harder Than It Sounds
However, finding a bone marrow donor is more complicated than finding a blood donor. To find a match, doctors examine donors’ human leukocyte antigen (HLA). HLA is a protein that the immune system uses to know which cells are yours and which are not.
Each person has six different HLA markers. Doctors can pinpoint your HLA through a DNA test by swabbing the inside of your cheek. If the six markers line up, the donor’s cells will not be “foreign” to the patient’s immune system.
An Unusual Bargain
Fortunately, Chris found his donor quickly–an anonymous man from Germany. At the time, Chris worked as an information technology employee at the Washoe County sheriff’s department in Reno, Nevada. They were a world apart.
Chris’s sad diagnosis spread around his office. When the news reached them, forensic scientists of Washoe County took an interest in his case. They offered Chris an unusual opportunity that would challenge the scientific community only a couple of years later.
Can Your DNA Change?
Renee Romero, who led the crime lab at Washoe County, heard about Chris’s situation through a colleague. The situation raised a question that Renee had been mulling over: would a bone marrow transplant change Chris’s DNA?
Renee spoke to Chris about the opportunity to partake in an experiment. “We need to swab the heck out of you before you have this procedure to see how this DNA takes over your body,” she remembered telling him.
A Human Guinea Pig
After hearing Renee’s proposal, Chris agreed. He welcomed the distraction from his fatal diagnosis and his difficult path to recovery. During the conversation, he reportedly told Renee, “I don’t even know if I will live.”
Regardless, Chris began the joint experiment. Acting as a human guinea pig, Chris allowed the scientists to take samples of his DNA before he underwent surgery. The scientists would continue to monitor Chris’s DNA throughout his remission and recovery.
Results Came Faster Than Expected
After his bone marrow transplant, Chris spent four years in remission. But Renee and her crime lab colleagues monitored him throughout his journey. Four months in, they analyzed Chris’s blood. His German donor’s DNA had replaced the genetic code in his blood.
The scientists also swabbed Chris’s cheek, lip, and tongue. The DNA in these areas was replaced by the donor’s as well. The DNA swapping was already accelerating faster than the forensic scientists had expected.
How Chris Transformed Into Another Person
The forensic scientists tracked Chris’s DNA samples over four years. Within months, swabs of his arms, legs, body, and face had been replaced by his donor’s DNA. Oddly, these findings fluctuated throughout the study. Some swabs contained both Chris’s and his donor’s DNA.
An even more surprising find was that Chris’s semen had its DNA replaced. By the end of the four years, every area of his body had new DNA except for his chest and head hair.
The Shock Of A Lifetime
These findings baffled the forensic scientists at the Washoe County sheriff’s office. No one expected Chris’s DNA to be entirely overtaken by his donor. As criminalist Darby Steinmetz said, “We were kind of shocked that Chris was no longer present at all.”
Chris was also shocked about the findings–but not to the point of despair. He told the New York Times, “I thought it was pretty incredible that I can disappear and someone else can appear.”
He Is A Real-Life Chimera
So what happened to Chris? The bone marrow transplant had made Chris a chimera–the scientific term for people with two sets of DNA. The term stems from the monster in Greek mythology that was a hybrid of three animals.
Before Chris’s study, forensic scientists knew that specific medical procedures cause chimerism. But they never researched where the donor’s DNA replaced the patient’s in the body. The fact that 99% of Chris’s DNA had changed raised questions among the medical community.
This Has Been Studied Before
Chimerism from bone marrow transplants has been researched before. In 2004, research in Bone Marrow Transplantation reported that marrow transplants replace at least some of the patient’s blood DNA. Even blood transplants temporarily replace DNA in the patient’s blood.
However, these studies have only analyzed DNA changes in blood. Before the study on Chris, scientists have not tested how a patient’s DNA changes in the rest of their body. In this sense, his case defied all expectations.
